paulraphael

Even if you choose to cook it sous-vide (as I would), I'd suggest consulting Japanese sources on wagyu. If the DeBragga wagyu is similar to authentic Kobe in the density of its marbeling, it should be cooked to a somewhat higher temperature even than other grades, prime included. If you cook it at the low end of medium-rare (55°C / 131°F) too little of the fat will melt and you'll get a rubbery texture. I don't have 1st-hand experience with wagyu so can't recommend an exact temp. For general cooking ideas on thick steaks, here's a thread that goes back to 2008, starting with stovetop method advocated by Alain Ducasse, and probably never ending.

We should ask tech support at Anova if a clean sine wave is important. Anova's scientific circulators output data, but it's via an RS232 port, which I have seen since sometime in the 20th century. Not sure what software they can talk to.

I was thinking you'd need a pretty burly UPS, but since the circulator will just be maintaining temperature, it wouldn't need much capacity at all. Especially if you're cooking in something insulated.

I'm betting you're right. Probably the reason pasta never contains salt is tradition. That's often the answer with Italian food. And since you can count on everyone salting the water when they cook the pasta, there isn't much motivation to change. A writer at Serious Eats experimented with salting fresh pasta dough: My dough was almost perfect; the only thing I wanted to test was whether I'd get even better flavor by adding salt directly to the dough, instead of just my cooking water or sauce. The simple answer is yes. Do it! Salting pasta water is still well and good, but there's no compelling reason not to salt your dough—I tried fine-grain iodized salt and slightly coarser kosher salt. Both work; I prefer the flavor of kosher salt. Just don't use a coarse sea salt, which will keep your dough from developing a silky-smooth texture. Hypothetically, you could salt your pasta even more and skip salting your pasta water, but I choose to make a dough that still tastes good after cooking in salted water since it gives me a little more flexibility when it comes to the flavor of the final product—I can make and freeze batches of dough and then decide how salty I want my pasta to be on a case-by-case basis. Not exactly a scientific account, but her results make sense. edited to add: I just checked my own fresh pasta recipe that I worked out over a half-dozen or so trials, and see that I include 1% salt by total recipe weight. Didn't even give it much thought; it's in there just on general principle. 1% isn't very much, and some might leach into the water. I still salt the cooking water.

For sure, but there are a some failures beyond the manufacturer's control I'd like to be texted about. Like a power failure, or if too much water evaporates and causes the thing to shut down. Granted, the latter shouldn't ever happen, and the former poses some challenges (how's it going to text me if there's no power?) But suppose the power goes off for an hour. The people at Anova said that they didn't include an auto-restart feature because it introduce all kids of danger and liability issues. So Why not get a text, some other notification? The food isn't ruined instantly. You have many hours to deal with a problem like this. Even if you're away for the weekend, you'd have enough time to have the cat sitter or a neighbor go in and reset the thing, or maybe you could do it remotely. This is the one class of remote feature that appeals to me. The rest? I don't see the utility. And circulators that only have a phone interface (Joule) would really annoy me. I can see having one as a second unit, or for travel, but I'm not excited about that interface for everyday use.

I have great faith that one day Tuscan bread bakers will discover salt. Next step: sous vide!

It could be a pan sauce or not. If a pan sauce, if you deglaze with stock and some wine, maybe some added aromatics, and reduce quite a bit, and then thicken at the end with something that gives both good texture and good flavor release. I use a mix of 1:10 xanthan gum and arrowroot starch. You can make a slurry with this and whisk it in. Roughly a half teaspoon per cup of sauce. The starch needs to be heated to hydrate, but it only take a minute. This gives a creamy mouthfeel that doesn't mute flavors the way cream or butter would. For more constructed sauces, I make a coulis (basically an intense, thickened stock ... similar to classical demiglace, but better tasting). This used to be a big deal to make; now that the pressure cooker has come along to save the day, I just make a pressure cooker stock with a high ratio of solids to water. I thicken it with 0.3% lambda carrageenan and 0.1% xanthan gum (plus all the natural gelatin). This mix is a little trickier to use, since it has to be blended in to disperse, which makes an annoyingly stable foam. And it needs to be added after you've defatted the stock. So I make and strain the stock on one day, chill it overnight to let the fat separate, skim it off, and then blend in the gums. Then I put it on the stove again to simmer it lightly (you can use this opportunity to put in some additional parsley and other herbs) to let the air com out. Then you can chill it and portion it for the freezer, etc.. This can be used as the base for any kind of quick sauce ... use it to deglaze a pan, add reduced mushrooms and mushroom liquid, or reduced wine or fortified wines, etc. etc..

You could blend coconut oil into coconut milk ... a quantity that will bring it to 33–36% fat. Flavor and sweeten as much or little as you like, chill, and whip like cream. Should work especially well in a whipping siphon.

Looking back on the evolution of my cooking over the last few years, I've noticed a lot of my newer recipes and techniques are low-fat or fat-free. The evolution hasn't been about diet; it's been about flavor. I've been finding that lower fat preparations can often have better flavor release, meaning brighter, more intense and direct flavors. Particularly in sauces. All my brown sauces of the last few years are fat-free or close to it, and they've never been better (of course they usually accompany a fatty piece of meat ... ). I've been making lower fat desserts as well, using gums and fluid gels and a siphon to make whipped creams out of all kinds of things (almond milk, booze, etc.). I'd suggest bringing the lean meat to life with vibrant, stock-based sauces that are dairy-free and thickened to whatever consistency you like with modern thickeners.

Seems like the manufacturers are dipping their little toes into the waters.

" a wide open frontier " in that the good ones are still too expensive, complex, and energy-inefficient to have much chance in the home market. There was a thread about Rational ovens here a while ago in which about half the pro cooks loved them, and the other half admitted to never touching them because the training sessions had flown right over their heads, and the control panels are intimidating. Which is another way of saying: my mom doesn't want one. Even if the price drops below $12,000. I gather some companies (electrolux included?) are trying to break into the home market in Europe. I haven't heard about the products or how this is going.

Btb, I'd agree on all points, except that in many of those examples the blade is slicing forward not just against the food but against the board itself. So it's effectively getting the same forward rolling, shearing action as other kinds of rock chopping. This separates it from push-cutting (or thrust-cutting / tsuki-giri) where the blade slides forward through the food but stops when it touches the board.

I don't know if there's a different name for it. But it's essentially the same technique. The food doesn't know if the tip is on the board or not.

This is all true. I've chosen Anova in the past because of the relatively minor differences in industrial design, and because I like the company. Unfortunately my reasons are ones that often get steamrolled when a minow gets eaten a by mass-market whale. I'll hope for the best. Electrolux seems to make good stuff ... serious bread bakers all swoon over the rather odd Electrolux mixer, and I've noticed that electrolux makes the motors for both my KA mixer and vitamix. And I still have the electrolux vacuum cleaner I inherited from my grandmother 10 years ago. Your point about the value of the technology is interesting. Makes me wonder if they have technology patents that we don't know about. Something related to combi ovens seems likely (as others have guessed) since this is their area of mutual interest, and also a wide open frontier.

When you taste your pasta before you sauce it, it should taste good. It shouldn't taste salty; it should taste seasoned to the point where its innate flavors are focussed and in balance. If it tastes flat, or like there's a hole in the middle of the flavor profile, you've undersalted the water. If it tastes salty, you've overdone it. This is assuming good pasta. Bad pasta tastes flat no matter what you do it; there's no flavor to bring out.

Around 3:40 he shows the difference a traditional rock-chop (he calls it 'the rolling method') and a more straight up and down chopping motion. When he dices the onionit's basically a rock-chop with the tip off the board. He dices the carrot with a plain old rock-chop. The Global he's using is made in Japan, but has a much fatter blade and more obtuse bevel angles than the thin gyutos I referred to earlier. Which accounts for his using it just like a German knife. This is all straight-up European cutting technique.

If I understand what you're describing (didn't see a link in your posts) it sounds just like rock-chopping. Some purists say that the tip should never leave the board, but a lot of people find it more efficient to do it that way, especially if you're cutting something tall. Either way it's the same basic motion ... the curved belly of the knife is acting as a fulcrum, and the blade pushes forward and down, shearing the food between knife and cutting board. Standard technique for a German-style knife, poor technique for a gyuto that's thin behind the edge.

I'm not sure what circus acts you're talking about. There's nothing inherently dangerous about any of the basic skills. Some of them are counterintuitive, and may seem scary (like bias-slicing toward your guide hand), but I find this just focusses your attention. I've never actually seen anyone cut themselves doing this technique, even as a beginner. The techniques usually have safety built into them. The thing is, when you're working with a very sharp knife, you never apply more than smallest amount of force to it. So you have a lot of control, and the knife never slips and goes flying. You get comfortable working the blade right by your fingers. And doing it blindfolded actually isn't much of a challenge, because your guide fingers position the knife more than your eyes do. I suspect knifeproof gloves would just foster inattention and bad habits. They make those things for processing plant workers who butcher meat on 12 hour shifts.

Re: "The only skill you need is to keep your fingers away from the sharp end of the knife" ... a lot of techniques put your fingers right against the blade. A lot of them cut right toward your fingers or right past them. Some of the Japanese techniques put your fingertip (not your curled knuckle) against the blade to guide it. I don't use the fingertip technique, but one of my teachers did, and he could out-cut anyone I've met.

I'll agree if you're really talking about fancy skills (katsuramuki, making roses out of tomatoes, etc). But I'm talking about basic skills. Being quick and efficient, cutting food evenly to the sizes and shapes you want, and making clean cuts that best preserve the flavor and texture of the food. I think basic skills benefit everyone, and being better at them is always better than being worse. For me personally, broadening and improving my skillset has allowed to me to enjoy prep, when previously I didn't. And it lets me get things done in half the time. Always significant! Part of the enjoyment is that I have an understanding of specific techniques, so when I'm doing something tedious, I can be consciously working on how to improve them. As far as rocking or not rocking, it's entirely knife-dependent. Rock-chopping was developed for European knives, which are limited by metallurgy in how sharp they can practically get. It's a technique that allows you to put a lot of force behind the cut, and to amplify that force with shearing action against the cutting board. The knives likewise have been designed for the technique, with a big curve in the belly. If you have a knife made of thinner, harder steel, not only is rocking unnecessary, but it's undesirable. Such a forceful technique would ravage the edge; you'd have a dull knife within minutes. I never rock-chop with the thin gyuto in that shallot video. But I have a burly German knife with a deep belly that I use for rock-chopping woody herbs and other things that are unfriendly to a thinner blade.

Based on your description, that sounds like push-cutting. The Japanese call this tsuki-giri (thrusting cut). It's a standard technique used with an usuba when cutting vegetables, and it translates well to a gyuto and other hybrid knives. Here's a quick video of push-cutting a shallot.

I agree with the Serious Eats article linked by jmolinari. There aren't any circumstances where pasta water as salty as the sea will give good results. That's a truism repeated by Italians (or maybe just Italian-Americans) but I've never seen any of them actually follow it (or measure, for that matter). I don't measure either ... I just go for pleasantly salty. But it's always way, way, less than 3.5%. The other big truism—about how much water you need—has been debunked many times. There's no advantage to the huge ratio of water to pasta. I've seen 5 to 6 liters per pound advocated. Marcella Hazan herself wrote to never use less than 3 quarts for any quantity of pasta (reason not given), to use 5 quarts per pound, and never more than 2 pounds per pot (something about sticking and safety). But cooks from Harold McGee to Kenji Lopez have found through experimentation that you not only don't need nearly that much water, but that in many cases it doesn't even have to be boiling. (Cook's Illustrated has come to similar conclusions, but I hesitate to cite them as a source). McGee even got Hazan and Lidia Bastianich to grudgingly agree. I haven't experimented with starting in cold water (or water below the boil, or with tiny quantities of water) but sometimes make up to a kilo of pasta in a 5 quart pot with around 3-3/4 quarts water. It works great. There is truly no difference in this case between making the same pasta in a full 12-qt stockpot. No need to waste the time and energy. I love Italian food, but have learned to treat Italian food wisdom with great skepticism.

There are a lot of threads and sites and blogs that deal with these questions, but in my opinion not too many deal with them adequately. If you use typically burly European-style knives, then the eGullet online course, and all the standard Cordon-Bleu techniques are probably adequate. If you're using thinner Japanese/Western hybrid knives, then there's a gap between the online instruction and the techniques that trained cooks often use. People do chop. And the thinner and more delicate the knife, the less likely they are to use Western rocking techniques. The techniques for these knives are derived from Japanese single-bevel techniques and adapted for the J/Western hybrid knives. Long slicing motions for proteins (starting with a short forward thrust to break the surface, followed by long crescent-shaped draw). Short push cutting motions for firmer foods (where the knife moves forward very slightly as its weight drops it through the food). Similar drawing cuts for more delicate food. And fast, vertical chopping with the front third of the blade for food that's firm enough hold its shape, delicate/small enough to not grab the blade. And there are hybrids between these motions. And no hard and fast rules about when to use which technique. It's more a matter of learning the techniques, practicing them, and then seeing which ones work in which situations. You may find that you prefer a different technique on today's mushrooms than on yesterday's.

As with a lot of things in the Modernist Cuisine kitchen, I'd like to have a wealthy and eccentric neighbor that I could borrow this thing from once a month. Along with a rotovap, a colloid mill, and a liquid nitrogen dewar.

I did my own experiment, without having tried the original recipe. This is just an adaptation of a standard buttermilk pancake / waffle recipe for the siphon. It's probably not as light as the OP's recipe, but I believe that this approach could be tweaked to be at least as light, and without any cream (or with whatever amount of cream you want to use for flavor/texture; you won't need it as a structural ingredient). I've eliminated the leavening, since the siphon already fills the batter with bubbles, and added methylcellulose at 0.2% the weight of the liquid. This gels at high temperature, preserving the structure while the waffle cooks, but then un-gels after cooking, when the temperature drops (by the time you eat the waffles, there should be no textural effect from the m.c.. I used Ticacell HV. 135 g all purpose flour 30g spray-dried buttermilk* 12–24g sugar 3g salt 0.6g methylcellulose 300g water* 2 eggs 35g butter seasoning (spices, vanilla extract. etc) *or use 1-1/4 cup fresh buttermilk -melt butter on stove or in microwave -stir together dry ingredients -whisk together wet ingredients -very thoroughly whisk the wet into the dry (alternatively use a stick blender or countertop blender) -strain into 0.5L siphon -charge with one N2O charger, shake vigorously, and hold for a minute. -dispense directly onto waffle maker